


Don't Wake Me Now

by seriaan



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Angst, Dirty Talk, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-30
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2018-10-12 16:02:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10494465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seriaan/pseuds/seriaan
Summary: It’s possibly the worst idea after a savage break-up, it’s possibly the best idea, Zach doesn’t know, but he turns up at the club with Zoe that night, feeling wild and reckless.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be honest: this was inspired by [this devastatingly good-looking pic of Chris Pine](http://dailychrispine.tumblr.com/post/147298532559/chris-pine-arrives-for-the-uk-premiere-of-star) \- and basically every other pic of him sporting a goatee - where he looks like the most perfect sugar daddy. Unfortunately, this isn't a sugar daddy fic! :( But there is lots of porn instead (at least 80% of this story is porn), so yay for that at least? Hope you enjoy.

It’s possibly the worst idea after a savage break-up, it’s possibly the best idea, Zach doesn’t know, but he turns up at the club with Zoe that night, feeling wild and reckless.

His chest’s sore like Eric really did take a knife to it and carve out a beating souvenir to keep for himself and Zach’s eyes feel gritty with what he won’t let out, but he doesn’t care. He heads straight to the bar, orders the first thing that comes to mind. Throws it back, slips the bartender cash, and then he’s on the dance-floor, sliding himself into that heaving tangle of bodies.

Zoe joins him, slim and sparkling in her dress. He twirls her and lets her go to twirl with someone else. There are hands on his hips, rubbing his belly, his chest. He grinds back against whoever’s at his back, the beat burning into his brain, pounding in his blood.

When the thirst hits again, he returns to the bar for another drink, slamming it down once he’s finished it.

“Do you have something against the glasses in this place?” a faintly husky voice asks. “That’s the second time I’ve seen you do that tonight.”

“What’s it to you? Are you a glassware activist?” Zach asks and makes the mistake of glancing at the guy talking to him, because the guy turns out to be incredibly easy on the eyes, possibly the hottest thing that’s currently in the club, and now that he’s looking, Zach’s finding it impossible to stop.

There’s coiffed bronze hair and an immaculate goatee peppered with silver to admire. A white shirt fitting perfectly around a defined torso, the top two buttons left undone and the sleeves rolled up to the elbow, revealing strong forearms. The stranger’s got a nearly finished drink in his hand and gold glints at his wrists and pinky finger – a watch and a ring that might each cost the same as Zach’s apartment, if not more. And his eyes are fucking ridiculous, a staggering shade of blue Zach thought only existed in the land of hyperbolic fiction, but they’re intelligent eyes too, Zach can tell. They look at him coolly, perceptive. This man looks expensive, smells expensive, the kind of expensive that’s out of Zach’s reach.

He looks nothing like Eric and it’s that more than anything that keeps Zach talking.

“Something on my face?” Mr. Greek God asks. “Since you’re clearly checking me out, I hope you don’t mind if I return the favor,” he says and does just that, those eyes travelling from Zach’s face to his boots, subjecting the entirety of him to a brazen, clearly appreciative examination. Zach’s belly clenches around the first stirrings of arousal, his body starting to zing with a jumpy kind of energy. He knows he’s dressed to kill tonight, but under this man’s hot, admiring gaze, he feels thoroughly attractive. “Well, now you have to tell me your name,” Mr. Greek God adds casually.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Sure. It’s a law or something. Look it up, while I buy you another drink.”

“You seem really sure I’d let you buy me another drink,” Zach says.

The guy, not that he hadn’t been paying attention in the first place, zeroes in on Zach with a more intense, laser-sharp focus. “What do you want, if not a drink?”

“I want,” Zach starts to say. The way this stranger is looking at him – there’s clear hunger and interest there and it’s enough to get Zach hard, just that one look. It’s making his skin hot and his mouth dry. He knows immediately what he wants and it’s not another drink.

Mr. Greek God seems to know it too. “You want to get out of here.”

Zach should say no. He doesn’t do things like this; this isn’t him. He’d made Eric work for it the first time they’d met, flirted extensively throughout the night and left him alone at the end of it with a teasing, wet kiss. He’d carefully forged a friendship alongside the physical attraction before they’d ever gone to bed together.

And now that friendship and everything he’d built on top of it has disintegrated. All the work he’d put into it, the strands of his heart he’d sewn into it, vanished without a trace.

Now he doesn’t want to be that guy— _himself_ —tonight, so he says, “Yeah,” and receives an approving smile, blue eyes crinkling.

“Good,” Mr. Greek God says. “Tell your friend. Let her know where you’re going; I’ll give you the address.”

“And where exactly am I going?”

“To my hotel room and then—” he finishes the sliver of his drink left, “—my bed.”

Zach feels the burning under his skin sharpen and sizzle. “Zach,” he says. “My name’s Zach.”

“Nice to meet you, Zach. I’m Chris.”

“Is this the part where you say that’s the name I’ll be screaming later?”

“I like to think I’ve got better technique than that,” Chris says, “but if you do end up screaming my name later, I won’t be complaining.” He smiles, charismatic, handsome. Magnetic. Zach wonders if the draw he’s feeling is what a moth feels helplessly towards the light that eventually burns it.

***

The simmer of anticipation is electric in Zach’s veins during the car-ride and the subsequent walk up to Chris’s hotel room.

One swipe of Chris’s key card and the door opens to reveal an unsurprisingly lavish room, but one tastefully decorated enough in shades of blue and silver and vintage ornaments that Zach doesn’t scoff. The bed is big, could easily fit three people.

“You sure you don’t want anything to drink?” Chris asks, draping his suit jacket over a chair.

Zach turns to face him. “I want to get fucked and I want it hard and fast,” he says bluntly and throws his leather jacket onto the floor, kicking off his boots carelessly.

Chris lets out a soft chuckle – the bastard’s _amused_ – and replies, “This night wasn’t going to end any other way, Zach.” He walks over unhurriedly, his mouth very faintly smiling, taking on a shape that is both confident and knowing.

Zach watches him come closer, wondering just what it is that Chris thinks he knows and then not wondering anything at all because Chris has a hand in Zach’s hair, has his mouth sliding onto Zach’s, his goatee scratching against Zach’s skin. He kisses fiercely and – when Zach parts his lips – endlessly, like he’s laying siege to Zach’s mouth and knows he’s got an infinite amount of time to do it in.

Zach is helpless against the moan that bursts out of him. He winds his arms around Chris, leans in hungrily, throwing himself into the hot, wet invasion and just barely managing to keep back an embarrassingly aggrieved sound when Chris abruptly pulls away. “Took one look at you and knew you were fucking aching for it,” Chris says, and Zach makes an embarrassing noise anyway, indignant that Chris thinks he’s so fucking easy to read but also unable to deny the words. Chris kisses him again, hard, bruising. “You were wild on that dance-floor, but nobody realized what you needed.”

“What?” Zach asks. “What did I—do I—need?”

“To be used until you forget the entire world,” Chris says, so sure of himself. Each word sends a hot pulse shuddering through Zach. He nearly closes his eyes against it, locking his legs down in an effort to stave off the weak-kneed feeling creeping over him. “I’ll give you everything,” Chris says against Zach’s lips and it sounds oddly like a promise.

“Yeah?” Zach says, swallowing. “Then how ‘bout we stop wasting time and get to the fucking?”

But Chris says nothing, not at all provoked. Zach works in theater; he understands body language, the tells that might be buried in even the most unreadable faces. He gets the impression that behind Chris’s seemingly calm demeanor, he’s calculating something, and it throws him off when Chris asks, “What’s ‘Zach’ short for?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Zach asks in return. Chris just looks at him expectantly, so he finally offers, “Zachary, not that you really need to know that.”

Chris makes a small, thoughtful sound. He says, “For a man so impatient to get fucked, why are you still dressed, _Zachary_ ,” and on Chris’s tongue, in his deliberate, low intonation, Zach’s name suddenly turns into something else, becomes some kind of spell that enchants Zach and has him stripping himself down to nothing in less than ten seconds. His cock smacks his belly, leaves a thin smear behind. His heart pounds in his chest chaotically as he stands exposed in front of Chris.

“Knew I chose well,” Chris says approvingly, the slow drag of his eyes like a hot caress Zach can feel against his skin. Chris reaches out, pushes once. Zach falls down onto the bed, the silk sheets soothingly cool at his back. “Your legs go on for fucking miles. The moment I saw you, I wanted them locked around my neck while I pounded your ass.”  

Zach pulls himself further up the bed before bending his legs at the knees, drawing them closer to his chest and spreading them shamelessly to give Chris a peek of what’s in between. “For a man who wants to fuck me so much, why aren’t you doing anything about it?”

Chris just says, “I put the lube in the bedside drawer.” Zach turns to retrieve the lube, discerning from the soft rustling of fabric that Chris is undressing. “Are you clean?” Chris asks. “I’ll know if you’re lying.”

“Of course I’m clean. Are you?”

“I am, and now I know I can leave as much of my come in your ass as I want.”

Zach looks back at him sharply. His hole clenches already in desire.

Chris is naked, his torso as tightly muscled as Zach had thought it would be, impressive without being excessively brawny. Zach feasts on the sight of him, something petty in him curling up happily at realizing Chris’s dick is larger than Eric’s, longer and thicker than Zach’s own, even. Any envy Zach might have felt is overshadowed by the raw, scorching need to have it inside him, splitting him in half. “Hope you know how to use that thing you’re packing,” he says, forcing his eyes away from Chris’s dark cock to the darker intent in Chris’s eyes.

“You’ll find out very soon how well I know how to use it,” Chris says and darts forward, ravenous at Zach’s mouth again.

They don’t bother with foreplay; it’s maddening enough to have Chris’s skin sliding smooth and hot against his and then his lube-slick fingers opening up Zach’s hole, sparking jolts of pleasure that burn good but still not enough, not enough to drive him really crazy and Zach bursts out with, “Shove your dick in me already!”

Chris doesn’t comply. “It’s cute that you think you’re in charge here,” he says, driving three fingers into Zach all at once, hitting him right where Zach needs it, that spot that electrifies the rest of his body and makes him throw back his head. A ragged, choked sound falls from Zach’s lips, then another when Chris does it again. Zach stops trying to reach for words altogether until Chris finally deigns it time to pull his fingers out, both of them silent with anticipation as Chris guides his dick closer.

The first touch of the wet head to his hole makes Zach shiver. Then Chris starts sliding in and Zach’s breath rushes out.

The first thrust is everything he wants. It’s beautifully, agonizingly long – a stretch he feels every inch of, sliding against his walls, stretching them wide, and it feels like it goes on forever, all of it, the burning stretch, the push of Chris’s cock, it’s the longest moment of his life. Zach can’t breathe. He’s inordinately aware that, save for a small, hitched sound, he’s gone silent, air strangled inside his chest, his throat.

Chris comes to a stop, groaning in satisfaction, his balls snug against Zach’s ass. “God, you’re _tight_. I’m gonna have to fuck you for an hour straight to get you nice and loose.” He strokes a hand through the pre-come and sweat staining Zach's belly and rests his palm against Zach’s wild heart. “You ready?”

Zach feels so full. So _full_. He thinks maybe he’ll feel where Chris’s cock is inside of him if he places a hand on his belly. It makes it that much harder to breathe, but then he gathers himself and says, “Yeah. Yeah, I’m ready. Sure I’m not too tight for you to handle?”

“Sweetheart,” Chris chuckles, “it’s not a question of whether _I_ can handle _you_.” He fixes his hands to Zach’s hips, says with a low, predatory edge to his voice, “I’m going to drill you into this bed, Zachary. I’m going to take what I want from your ass and I’m not going to give you a break even after you come. Do you understand?”

Zach twists the fingers of both hands into the sheets. “You heard me when I said I wanted hard and fast, right?”

The corner of Chris’s mouth twitches just a little, a flicker of a smirk. “Good,” he says quietly and the next thing Zach feels is Chris’s cock pulling out of him only to forcefully snap back in again with a loud slap of skin and a strained, “ _Fuck_ ,” leaving Zach’s lips.

Chris starts up a pounding rhythm from the beginning, fucks Zach like an animal, and Zach freely revels in it, the rough, primal act of sex at its most simplest, lifting his ass and taking it, every inch of that large dick and the bruising force behind it, soreness already starting up in his hole that he’ll deliberately clench down on later just to have it spike through him again. The stretch in his ass is huge and Zach loves it, feels like he won’t be one piece again now that he’s had Chris inside him, forcing him open, spreading him apart—he’ll just continue to be empty until Chris fills him again.

Leaning down, bending Zach’s body beneath him, Chris kisses him quickly, then grabs his hair, pulling his head back. He nips at Zach’s bared throat, over his jaw, and then he’s breathing hot against Zach’s ear, “Is this fast and hard enough for you, sweetheart?” Slams into Zach again, unforgiving, right into his prostate, and over Zach’s yell, Chris demands to know, “ _Is it_?”

“ _Yes_ , yes, fucking yes, don’t stop,” Zach implores breathlessly, clutching onto Chris desperately, hands slipping over Chris’s shoulders, his hair, the sweat at Chris’s back, trying to force him closer, deeper, as deep as Chris can get. “Don’t fucking stop ever, oh my God.”

“Not so mouthy now with my dick in you. No – just falling apart beautifully.”

“Fuck me, fuck me, Chris,  _break_ me, you have to.”

Not that Chris needs any telling. He uses Zach without directly considering Zach’s pleasure, uses him like he’s nothing more than a hole for Chris’s dick to fuck however he damn well pleases, and Zach – Zach hears himself flying apart. He hears himself loving it, long, dirty moans pouring out of his slack mouth like they’re one, drawn-out syllable in an exceptionally filthy song. He tries to push down and meet Chris’s thrusts halfway, wanting to help Chris use him, wanting more, wanting Chris, Chris, Chris.

“Listen to you. You sound like you’re losing it. Haven’t been fucked properly in ages, have you?”

Zach screws his eyes shut and turns his head away from the truth of the words, the painful wrench in his chest. He doesn’t want to think about how many months it’s been since the last time Eric had touched him in any meaningful way, so he says, “ _Harder_ ,” instead and forces himself to sound anything but as helpless as he suddenly feels. “Want it harder. Need it.”

“Yeah, you do,” Chris mutters, the lust thick in his voice. “Yeah, you do, ‘cause you’re fucking perfect,” and he’s snapping his hips forwards in rapid, unstoppable beats like he really intends to break Zach. Break right through into him.

Zach comes first; he can’t not under that onslaught of power and pleasure, but his orgasm still hits like a surprise. He’s so caught up in the frantic rushing inside of his head, the fire coursing through his body with each of Chris’s relentless slams, that he doesn’t entirely realize he’s coming until he feels the wet spurts shooting over his chest, the pleasure twisting tight inside him almost like pain. He comes so hard he fails to register anything else beyond his own body for long, dizzying moments, gasping in what air he can in between trembling moans, his every muscle taut. Vaguely, he feels Chris still fucking into him like he said he would be, hears the low grunts of effort.

Chris goes on for another solid five minutes even when Zach begins tightening around him, working Chris’s cock with his clenching and unclenching hole, mumbling, “Come on, come in me, gimme all that spunk.”

“God, baby, that’s hot,” Chris mutters and Zach keeps at it until finally there’s that warning throb inside of him just before Chris says, “Gonna fill you up now, Zachary,” and his dick starts jerking as it spills.

Zach moans softly, welcoming the mess in his ass, feeling oddly pleased, like he’s achieved something, like he’s being rewarded. He doesn’t understand it, so he chooses to focus on something he does understand: the fulfillment in Chris’s expressive face, his sensual mouth parted, his gleaming chest heaving and pink with arousal.

Zach wants to rub his hands all over him. “Big dick and good stamina,” he says. “You’ve been blessed.”

“And you’re benefiting. Aren’t you lucky.” Chris doesn’t bother pulling out. He’s still half-hard inside Zach. “You do realize I’m gonna fuck you again, right?”

“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”

“Good answer,” Chris says, licking his lips. His eyes are hot, possessive, and Zach can’t look away.

***

It’s slower the second time round. Not gentler, not tender, just slower.

Chris says, “You just lie there and hold that ass still for me,” and Zach still feels lethargic with his orgasm so he lets Chris have this, keeping his legs open as he stares up at Chris hazily.

Chris’s pace is carefully measured. Each time, he pulls out entirely and it’s agony to have that moment of complete emptiness, but then Chris slides his cock back in, roughly enough to jar the rest of the Zach’s body, and it devastates Zach all over again to feel the re-entry, the pain-pleasure of the flared head forcing his hole open once more, the rest of Chris’s girth burning a path through Zach that mercifully avoids his prostate for now. He thought he’d felt each one of Chris’s thrusts before, but now it’s somehow more intense, maybe down to the sensitivity of his body.

This is another kind of being used, Zach realizes. He’s just lying there, completely open and loose on the bed, and letting himself be taken. He’s letting himself be _had_. It makes him prickle hot all over, like he’s being prodded at with small, insistent pokers. He thinks he should feel – humiliated, being this passive all of a sudden, being _easy_ , but the humiliation never really hits. The only thing he feels Chris: Chris’s cock moving in and out of him, Chris’s eyes never leaving his, Chris’s scent in the gap between them just before he closes it and kisses Zach. Zach returns it sloppily, sucking at Chris’s tongue, running a languid hand through Chris’s silky hair.

“You’re so good,” Chris whispers when he pulls away. It sounds too sincere, too intimate, even now when they’re naked and Zach’s come stains their skin and Chris is inside him.

Zach’s saved from having to acknowledge it by Chris’s hands dropping to his hips as he eases himself out.

“Wait, what—?”

“Shh,” Chris says and turns Zach around, puts him up on his hands and knees, pushes his dick back in, and Zach hisses, arching his back, shuddering at the lewd sound of Chris steadily working his dick back into a come-wet hole. “Perfect. Just stay like that,” he says, dropping small kisses from Zach’s shoulder to his nape, where, without warning, Chris sinks in his teeth.

Zach jolts like he’s been electrocuted. “ _Chris_.”

“Mm, did I do something?”

“You’re such an as— _aah_ , yeah.”

Chris licks gently at the mark he’s created, far more gently than the hand he closes around Zach’s cock. He strokes, twists his hand around the leaking crown, but when Zach tries to thrust forward, Chris’s free hand immediately grips onto Zach’s hip to keep him in place. “Didn't I say to stay still.”

Zach breathes out hard. Bites his bottom lip and draws everything in him tightly together to hold himself motionless. Giving Chris what he wants gets Zach what he wants.

“Good,” Chris murmurs. He drags his cock out almost all the way and shoves back in so hard, it’s a strike to Zach’s prostate, a scalding flare deep inside him, and Zach has no hope of staying up on his knees, buckling down onto the bed, whining into the silk at the sharp, bright friction of his cock gliding across the sheets. Chris follows him down, trapping Zach against the bed, and that’s somehow it, that’s all Zach needs to set him off, gasping, clenching down, hard, onto Chris’s dick.

Chris groans, “Oh, _fuck_ ,” hoarsely, regressing to shallower thrusts before his hips press tight against Zach’s ass and he comes, keeping himself pinned there like he doesn’t want to leave. He buries his face into Zach’s hair, drops his forehead against the stinging bruise he’s left on Zach’s nape, panting harshly.  

Zach stays exactly where he is. His breath trembles in his lungs. His entire body heaves, all jumbled up inside. There’s a layer of exhaustion draping itself all over him and Zach struggles with it, feels weak under its weight.  

He almost misses what Chris says.

“Stay the night. The weekend, even. Let me have you for a bit longer.”

“OK,” slips out of Zach’s mouth on its own, a dreamy sound. He’s falling deeper into the fogginess encroaching upon him and when Chris’s arms tighten around him, holding him securely, Zach thinks it’s fine to close his eyes and just give in. To forget the world for some time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots more doses of porn. Next chapter is more plot - such as the plot is, aha.

Soft lips trail up and down his neck. Mischievous fingers play over his thighs and Zach smiles. Eyes closed, he turns his pleasantly tired body and settles onto his back with a content sigh. These mornings, the ones where he wakes with Eric’s hands on him and he can carry the feel of them with him throughout the rest of the day, are Zach's favorite, 

Reaching out, he seeks the thick curls of Eric’s hair, but finds straight strands instead, too smooth and short. Frowning, Zach drops his hand and opens his eyes, blinking a few times to get rid of the bleariness.

He sees blue where it should’ve been green, blond where it should’ve been brown, pale skin and not a gold tan. An entirely different man instead.

 _Chris_.

Zach sucks in a sharp breath.

“Hey there,” Chris murmurs. “You all right?”

“Yeah. Sorry. Just…forgot where I was for a sec.”

“Understandable.” Chris is to his left, leaning over him. There’s a small gap between their bodies, filled with the heat radiating from Chris. His hair has long fallen out of its neat arrangement, stubble darkening his cheeks. The pale sunlight coming in through the windows brightens up his eyes and long lashes. He looks softer now, this man who'd dismantled Zach with his cock and whispered things that had burned his blood. Who still has his hand on Zach’s thigh, his thumb stroking over skin. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” Zach replies and melts back into the bed, no longer tense with surprise. He lets Chris keep his hand where it is. "Interesting night, last night."

"Yes. Very."

"Sorry I passed out at the end there." 

"Don't be," Chris says. His smile is incredibly pleased. "I took it as a compliment." 

Zach snorts. "Then I've obviously served my purpose as your little ego-boost."

Chris's eyes crinkle, "Obviously."

"Do you always ask your one-night stands to stay for the weekend?"

"Do you want the truth or the lie?"

"The truth," Zach says too quickly and has to hold back a wince. A pathetic laugh at his own behavior. "Lies are boring, that's all," he says weakly, even though it's not a slip-up he expects Chris to notice or make anything of. 

Chris presses down on Zach's thigh like he's reassuring him of something. "No, I don't always ask my one-night stands to stay. Only the very good ones." 

"I'll take that as my overdue compliment, shall I?" Zach looks down at Chris's hand and his eyes naturally drift to his morning hard-on. "You got any plans or are you just tactile in the morning?"

“I'm glad you asked, Zachary," Chris says, so polite when the roguish look on his face is anything but. "I want to make you come again.”

Zach's cock twitches its interest. “Not done using me?”

“Not by a long shot," Chris admits easily, "if you’re amenable, of course.”

Like he can’t already tell Zach’s moving straight past amenable and right into _hell, yes_.

“Far be it from me to deny you,” Zach says, careful to make his own voice as low and sultry as Chris's because he doesn’t want to be _too_ obvious.

Chris’s fingers don't hesitate in shifting down to Zach’s balls, flicking by them with a cursory touch and moving lower. Zach breathes out slowly at the finger Chris slides into him without preamble. He throws a hand over his eyes for refuge from Chris’s watchful gaze, but there’s no refuge from the quiet, slick sounds of Chris’s finger slipping through the remains of come he’s left inside Zach until it is knuckle-deep. Patiently, Chris opens him up again, stroking steadily into the tenderness at the core of him, making it spark again in little bursts until Zach’s squirming, rocking down helplessly onto the gentle but insistent enticement of Chris’s fingers.

The hand Zach has covering his eyes gets pulled away, pulled down. “Go ahead and jerk off,” Chris says, guiding Zach’s fingers around his own cock. “Just enjoy this, Zach.” Chris takes his hand away and he still hasn’t moved any closer to Zach, the only point of real contact between them his fingers working in Zach’s loose hole. It’s almost impersonal, as if that’s the sole part of Zach that’s worth holding Chris’s attention, and it gets Zach as hot as it did the night before, his skin tingling.

Matching the languid rhythm Chris has going on, Zach fists himself and strokes, huffing out soft breaths. He's got only pre-come to ease each stroke, but he gasps, " _Ah_ ," and forgets about the lack of lube at the soft nudge to his prostate. 

"Look at me," Chris says, so Zach does, not sure when he'd closed his eyes. He keeps his hips rolling into Chris's fingers, starts squeezing his dick with a low grunt, and watches Chris watch him jerk off as he's being finger-fucked.

"I'm close," Zach murmurs, thighs trembling. 

"Turn your head to the right.”

The instruction makes no sense to him, but Zach does it with the certainty that all the things Chris tells him to do will only be good for him, and he's proven right. Teeth suddenly press into the mark Chris had made last night, biting Zach’s orgasm free from where it’s straining in his tight balls so that it rushes over him, not as intense and overwhelming as it had been last night but just as good.

Over it, he hears Chris say, “You look so good when you come." Both of Chris's eyes are perfect replicas of a soft Spring sky. “Are you still staying?”

“It’s cheating to ask a guy that after an orgasm,” Zach says when his breath and voice returns, “and when you’ve still got your fingers inside him.”

“It’s clever, is what it is,” Chris says, the pads of his fingers pressing against Zach’s walls very gently. Zach issues a small sound. “See?”

“Cheating,” Zach insists. “But I guess I’m still staying.”

It earns him a smile.

Chris’s fingers leave Zach’s hole, wiping themselves clean against Zach’s thigh. “I’ll sort out breakfast. And the sheets,” he adds after glancing down at the bed. “You can have the first shower. There should be a spare toothbrush in there.”

“Thanks,” Zach says slowly. It’s not the bed he’s got his eyes on, but Chris’s hard dick. “Don’t you want me to, you know, return the favor?”

Chris shakes his head, though he also smirks a little as he says, “Don’t worry, I intend to collect, but that’ll be after we’ve had something to eat and plenty to drink.”

Zach kind of wants to go back to sleep again, but he knows Chris's idea is a good one and now he's too aware of his empty stomach. “All right. If you're sure.” Gingerly, he moves to the edge of the bed and climbs out, glancing once over his shoulder to catch Chris watching him closely and with clear self-satisfaction.

“Shout if you need any help," he says, smirking. 

Zach rolls his eyes, hides the smile that wants to creep out by turning his face to the front again.

He walks into the bathroom on legs that feel rubbery, heading immediately for the shower and groaning in loud relief at the hot water that pelts down onto his throbbing body at the press of a button. Zach ignores the cold of the tiles and rests himself against them, standing there until his mind turns away from thoughts of what he's done and what he's doing. Until his head is as foggy as the steam floating around him.

***

It takes five minutes of furious texting with Zoe to reassure her that Chris hasn’t abducted him and he’s willingly spending the weekend with him.

“She’s protective, huh?” Chris says, smiling at Zach over the rim of his coffee cup.

“Yeah,” Zach says, switching his phone for the glass of water. “Like you, I’m not really in the habit of turning my one-night stands into weekend sleepovers.”

“I’ll have to do my best to make sure you don't regret it.”

"Pressure's on," Zach chuckles and drinks until his glass is empty. “But I’m sure you'll manage it." 

He’s wearing the hotel’s bathrobe while Chris has only a towel wrapped around his waist, his lightly furred chest and toned arms displayed for Zach’s visual pleasure. Shifting in his chair, Zach crosses his legs, a twinge echoing deep inside him, and pretends not to notice the robe slipping further away from his thighs. His eyes roam around the room in a slower inspection than the one he’d conducted before. “I’m curious. What job is it that’s giving you enough cash to stay in a place like this?”

Chris sets his coffee cup down and gently pushes it away from him. Monotonously, he says, “I work at a tech company.”

“But in a senior position, presumably?”

“VP’s pretty senior, last I checked.”

“ _VP_? I’m impressed. Even though you make it sound like I shouldn’t be.”

Chris shrugs. “It’s just really, really not what I imagined I’d end up doing with my life, but it’s the way the cards fell and that’s the most I’m going to say about it. I don’t want to be that asshole who complains about his job when he’s privileged enough to make as much as he does. How about you? What do you do?”

“I'm a theater production manager," Zach says and Chris’s expression lights up like a burst of fireworks. It’s something Zach recognizes; he’s seen it on everyone who shares his passion and he knows he wears it too, whenever he’s watching a live performance or got a satisfying book open in front of him.

“I love the theater,” Chris shares, a hushed reverence in his voice. Zach finds himself leaning in, lured in bodily by the sound and sight of Chris’s admiration. “And I love literature. I try to read whenever I can. I packed a few books to read for while I'm in L.A., but—” he looks at Zach pointedly, teasingly, “—we’ll see if I actually manage to read any of them.”

“Hey, if it doesn’t happen, I’m not taking the fall for it. You’re the one who asked me to stay.”

“Of course I did. Look at you.”

“I appreciate the flattery. Keep it coming.”

“It’s not flattery,” Chris says, too candidly to argue with.

Zach feels a warmth creep over him. He clears his throat and says, "'While you're in L.A.'? Are you here on business?" 

“For the upcoming week, yes. I live and work in New York now but I grew up here actually and it's nice to be back.”

“So you decided to celebrate your temporary return by picking up a stranger for a night fun?”

Chris feigns surprise with a dramatic frown. “You mean there’s another way to celebrate?”

“Probably,” Zach says, lips twitching. “But as you already know, I have no complaints.”

“And neither do I.”

They're both thinking of the previous night, Zach can tell, the silence heavy with the heady recollections though it shatters in Zach's head as he remembers the searing words Chris had uttered, the pornographic sounds that Zach had made himself. 

“It doesn’t have to be like last night,” Chris says. “I can tone it down.”

“No,” Zach says hastily and then has to pause, taken aback by his own vehemence. “I...didn’t mind. I _really_ didn’t mind.”

“That surprises you,” Chris notes. “How much you liked it.”

“It’s not what I normally go for.” But that was why he’d agreed to coming back to Chris’s hotel room, wasn’t it? Because he wanted something different. He wanted to be someone different. And if he’s going to be staying for longer… Zach licks his dry lips. “What you said about using me until I forgot the entire world - I want more of that,” he admits and hopes Chris won’t ask him why.

Instead, Chris asks something worse. “What do you want more? To be used or to forget the world?” he says and it's like the rug’s been abruptly pulled out from under Zach. Before he can ask what kind of a question is that – what the hell is Chris implying by saying there’s a distinction all of a sudden? – Chris is backtracking. “You know what? Ignore that. It doesn’t matter.”

Zach opts to nod in case anything he says comes out wrong. He didn't agree to this because he wants an analysis of his motives. He’s only interested in the fucking and with a quick look at their empty plates, he decides that since they’re both done with breakfast, he’s happy to precipitate events.

Uncrossing his legs – the long legs Chris seems to like so much – Zach stands, tugging loose the knot of his robe. He shrugs it off, letting it pool around his feet as Chris watches avidly like he hadn’t seen Zach naked only an hour or so ago. Zach basks in that look, savoring the knowledge that it’s all for him, he’s the reason for its existence.

“It’s a shame you have to wear any clothes at all,” Chris says. “I’d keep you naked every day, but I’ll settle for just this weekend.”

“All right,” Zach agrees easily. “So long as you do more than just looking.” He moves forward, climbing onto Chris’s lap, knees on either side. The towel’s soft against his ass and thighs and incredibly warm. Clasping Chris’s face with both hands, Zach deliberately rubs his palms into the stubble and leans down until their lips meet. Chris tastes of tangy coffee, sweet butter. He twines his fingers together at the small of Zach’s back, humming into the kiss.

“Didn’t you say something about collecting?” Zach whispers, lowering his hands to Chris’s chest, lightly squeezing his pecs. He tilts his chin up to let Chris’s mouth close onto the middle of his throat. Chris sucks at first, then his teeth grip Zach’s larynx the way hunting predators snatch up their defeated prey by the throat. 

***

The bed becomes his nest for hours. Zach barely leaves it. 

Chris is unafraid to tell him what he wants and how he wants it. He’s unabashedly sexual and sensual and he turns Zach into some sort of reckless, wanton  _kept boy_ , touching him with a sense of entitlement Zach would find ordinarily find irritating, but here and now, he leans into it without protest. Chris thumbs Zach’s nipples, rubs his belly, fondles his cock and balls and hole in casual movements, perfunctory strokes like they’re his belongings, and at this point, they probably are, because Zach's shamelessly handed himself over. He hasn’t been touched like this in too long, made to feel so wanted and desired, a deep hunger in him that is only being satiated now as his skin bruises and colors and sings under Chris’s rough affection.

Everything turns into one blur of ecstasy. There’s Chris’s cock heavy and leaking on Zach’s tongue, heavy and pouring down his throat. There’s Chris’s hand smoothing down Zach’s hair as Zach comes panting and rutting against the sleek skin of Chris’s bare thigh like a _dog_. There’s Chris’s tongue at his hole, slipping inside, the softness of his mouth offset by the scrape of his goatee where Zach’s skin is so sensitized, and Zach can’t escape because Chris’s grip on his hips is unyielding, he just moans and moans Chris's name. 

The evening finds them on the couch in the sitting area, Chris talking business gossip with a friend, his arms resting languidly across the back of the couch and Zach moving in his lap. In thrall, Zach thinks dazedly, this must be what it means to be in thrall. This addiction, this need, this eager wish to be malleable to whatever desire strikes Chris in the heat of the moment, fervent when it comes to pleasing him.

“That’s not what the figures in the article are showing, Macy,” Chris says, languid as a man who frequently has someone riding his cock while he makes phone calls on speaker. His eyes are trained on the place his cock slides in and out of Zach, his tongue flicking over his lips like he wants to taste that hot, wet point of connection once again.

Zach’s got his hands braced on Chris’s knees behind him, thighs splayed, giving Chris the perfect view. He’s making a display of himself and he doesn’t care, can't be bothered to care, idly moving on Chris’s cock in small rocking motions, luxuriating in the fullness and the soreness of his rim.

He wants to kiss Chris, but Chris needs his mouth free to talk so Zach keeps staring at those full lips and remembering how they feel against his own. How they drag silkily against his skin, suck one bruise after another onto him. They've left his nipples aching, a delightful pain, and Zach removes a hand from Chris’s knee to stroke it up his chest, find a sore bud. He pulls at it leisurely, closing his eyes, letting his mouth hang open in silent sighs. When he looks again, Chris is intently watching Zach work his nipple.

 _You like that?_ Zach mouths slowly.

Chris says, “How could I not,” ostensibly to Macy, but Zach knows it’s for him really, so he stops rocking on Chris’s dick and lets both of his hands do the moving instead, twisting his nipples, teeth gritted to hold back noise.

“I understand, of course I understand, but here’s what I think is going to happen,” Chris says, and as he speaks, he finally takes his hands off of the backrest to palm Zach’s asscheeks, squeezing, making Zach tighten around his cock with a bitten-back moan. “Two can play at this game, after all, don't you agree.”

One of Chris's fingers slips underneath to the stretched rim of Zach’s hole and sits there lightly, just a gentle, teasing pressure. Zach manages to hold back a gasp, but not the hard clamp of his body. Chris’s eyes go dark. His jaw tightens. His finger stays where it is. “Of course we can talk another time, Macy, preferably over lunch or dinner. Have yourself a good night,” Chris says and the call disconnects. “Now where were we?”

"I think," Zach says, moving properly now, his cock rubbing against Chris’s abs with each smooth, regular roll of his hips, “I think this is the part where you fuck me properly.”

“Properly? Is that a complaint about my performance so far?”

“Well, I _have_ been doing all the work this time round.”

“If you’re so dissatisfied, you could always climb off my dick and leave.”

“Now, now. I didn’t say anything about leaving, Chris.”

Chris runs his warm hands up and down Zach’s spine, chasing after the quivers moving along it. “If you put some more effort in, I might give you that proper fucking you’re desperate for.”

"Yeah?" Zach shifts to a more abrupt pace, bouncing heavy and quick on Chris’s cock, his own dick bobbing and smacking back against his skin. “Maybe I’ll just make myself come like this.”

Chris narrows his eyes. “If you know what’s good for you, you wouldn’t dare.”

Zach laughs, shivering again. "Just the kind of threat I like,” he says and does his best to make Chris carry it out. 

***

On Sunday, Chris’s weapon of choice is his mouth. It’s a circle of wet fire dragging against Zach’s skin, stinging and soothing alternately. Every time Zach tries to speed him up, Chris slows down. Every time Zach’s hands move in wordless desperation, Chris’s fingers find their way to Zach’s wrists and hold them away with a sure grip. Zach can only breathe hard and arch into the sharp teeth, soft tongue. When Chris stops at last, Zach’s body is a tapestry of pulsing bruises that depicts Chris’s hunger and Zach’s keen willingness to appease it.

They shower together, Zach gladly letting Chris do all the work in there too. Chris doesn’t seem to mind. He pauses a few times, just to stroke over a hickey. Zach tries not to shudder too obviously at the delicate touches to his neck and his thighs.

Chris orders room service afterwards and they eat while lounging contently on clean sheets. Zach basically inhales his share of the food and finishes off two glasses of water, while Chris divides his attention between eating and typing at his laptop. He occasionally spares Zach a glance, giving him a smile that could be described as indulgent.

“Checking on your pet?” Zach asks, an eyebrow raised. 

“You’re behaving very well,” Chris says and deserves to have Zach bite him on the arm. Laughing, Chris tugs his arm away. “No rewards for you now.”

“Please. I _am_ the reward,” Zach says with a sniff.

“My reward,” Chris murmurs in the rasp that makes the hair on the back of Zach’s neck stand up. He’d thought Chris only sounded like that when he was close to coming; clearly that was a mistake.

“Better enjoy me while you can.”

Chris’s smile turns wolfish and Zach’s vaguely irritated by how he likes it enough to feel disappointed when Chris turn backs to his laptop. At least Chris says, “I’ll give you a massage once I’m done sending these emails.”

“No rush,” Zach says. He checks his phone for any new messages and then briefly considers opening up an app to entertain himself with or even asking Chris for one of those books he said he’d packed. He ends up doing neither, remaining sprawled on the bed, listening to the tapping of Chris’s fingers and thinking, irrationally, about how each of those small sounds seem to beat in time with the slow aches of his weary body.

Zach’s staying true to his word and keeping himself naked, his clothes from Friday night folded neatly on one of the chairs where they were placed after Chris had them cleaned for him at some point. He knows Chris appreciates seeing his own handiwork etched all over Zach and Zach can't say he dislikes his lack of clothing either. He's learned intimately that it's never a bad thing to have Chris's eyes on him. 

As for Chris, he's wearing just a pair of loose pants that he’s obviously kept for years, washed again and again until the blue fabric faded in color and turned incredibly soft. It’s an appealing little detail; Zach likes that there’s also a place for something simple and well-loved beside Chris’s bespoke suits and expensive accessories. He likes it as much as he likes the way Chris smells: an amalgam of soapy bodywash and woodsy cologne. He wants to inch closer, press his face to Chris’s hip and thigh, breathe in against clean, warm skin, but Zach quickly stops the urge every time it rises. It's something you do to your boyfriend, not to...whatever Chris is.

Zach’s going to be leaving in a few hours anyway and they’re most likely never going to meet again, so it doesn’t matter. None of this does. 

He repeats that to himself and somewhere along the way, Chris rests a hand in Zach’s hair, scratching lightly against his scalp, and Zach starts drifting off. He rouses from his stupor only when he feels the bed shift.

“Chris?”

“Hey. Have a good nap?”

Chris’s laptop is gone and he’s lying next to Zach now, his face very close, his eyes so bright and blue. He fills up all of Zach's vision, like he's the only other entity in existence.

“Didn’t mean to." 

Chris smiles. His mouth looks as soft and inviting as ever. “I was being boring anyway. Do you want that massage I mentioned earlier?”

“Please,” Zach says as wretchedly as he can. “It’s only right after what you’ve put me through.”

“Wow. Sounds like you had a terrible time.”

“The worst. We should do all of it again.”

“Absolutely.” Chris disappears into the bathroom, returning with a tube of lotion. “Come on, onto your stomach.”

Zach flips over, settling his head on a pillow and waiting expectantly with his eyes closed. Chris settles himself on Zach’s thighs, the pressure of his weight not unwelcome. A sweet fragrance blooms in the air first, followed by Chris’s warm, slick hands rubbing over his shoulders. They’re gentle initially and then grow firmer, digging into his tense muscles, undoing the strain. Zach moans in gratitude.

“You sound like you’re still getting fucked,” Chris notes with obvious amusement.

“Fuck off, I can’t help it,” Zach mutters without heat. “Don’t stop,” he adds, aware that that’s also something he says when he’s getting fucked.

Chris chuckles. His hands steadily work down Zach’s back for a length of time Zach has no hope of tracking, easing knots and aches, rendering him boneless on the bed. Zach doesn’t hold back his sighs and moans. His upper body suddenly feels elastic and supple and it's heavenly. The moment Chris’s fingers reach his ass, though, Zach opens his eyes.

“Are you getting hard?” Chris asks. The tip of one of his fingers gently skims over Zach's cleft.

"Kinda." Zach hums and looks over his shoulder. He’s got the low buzzing in his belly that he gets at the beginning moments of arousal, his cock still thickening slowly but nowhere near full hardness yet -- unlike Chris's dick, which is denting the fabric of his pants, pointing forward like it’s aiming for Zach’s ass. “I thought this was meant to be a massage.”

“Not interested in a happy ending?" Chris says, palming one asscheek. "We won't do anything if you're not up to it."  

But Zach's already pushing his ass up against Chris's hand. “Touch me,” he sighs and rests his head back onto the pillow. “I’m willing to sacrifice myself to your voracious sexual appetite one last time.”

He expects to feel Chris spread him apart and settle his fingers at Zach’s hole, but Chris climbs off him, his hand on Zach’s shoulder persuading him to turn around. Chris slips in between Zach’s legs, leaning down to kiss him once, twice, three more times, playfully coaxing Zach to open up and let Chris in. It’s - sweet. An anomaly considering the savage way they’ve been fucking and Chris’s tendency to take Zach’s mouth like it’s a thing he owns, holding it hostage until Zach's lost all his breath.

Absentmindedly, Zach plays with the soft hair at Chris’s nape. He slides his hands down the smooth length of Chris's back, pushing them beneath the band of his pants and spreading his fingers greedily over a firm ass. “Take these off,” Zach murmurs into the easy slip and slide of their mouths. “Wanna see your gorgeous dick again.”

“Can't get enough of it?”

"You and your ego already know the answer to that." 

Together, they both push Chris’s pants down and off the side of the bed. Chris’s satin-smooth cock slides against Zach’s for a beautiful moment and Zach breaks the kiss to look down, because he wasn’t lying when he said he wanted to see Chris’s dick. It _is_ gorgeous, plump and a little glossy at the tip and looking at it, fuck, just looking at it has Zach licking his lips, desperate for more of a taste than the one blowjob he's given so far. He reaches down to stroke his fingers along Chris’s length and Chris lets out an approving sound against Zach’s jaw, so Zach keeps his fingers there, stroking gently. The slow-burning arousal bubbling in him is making him want _something_ , but he doesn’t know what exactly. He wonders if this is simply the way his body would have felt right now or if it’s to do with Chris and whatever magic that comes along with him.

Chris begins deliberately thrusting against the crease of Zach’s thighs, sliding hot over Zach’s balls. Zach widens his legs, lifts his hips, and the fat cockhead nudges into his taint and over his empty hole.  For a moment, Zach doesn’t care that they haven’t used any lube yet, blinded by the sharp, cutting need to have Chris sliding into him right there and then, nailing him with one thrust.

“Turn to the side,” Chris says, helping Zach move into position and lying down behind him, fingers grabbing at Zach’s asscheek. “I can’t tell you how much I love this ass.”

“Really? I had no idea.”

“Always,” Chris whispers with a bite to Zach’s ear, “so fucking mouthy. What am I going to do about that, hmm?” Slipping a finger in between Zach's cheeks, Chris rubs the pad of it back and forth over Zach’s tender hole, eliciting a shudder. Zach clutches at the sheets with one hand. “Is your pretty little hole sore, Zachary?”

“You know it is. You made sure of it.”

“That’s right, I did. You don’t know how much I wanna wreck this hole every time I see it and I will, Zach, I’m gonna leave it raw by the time I’m done with you.” The rich promise of his words reaches in deep, hooks into all the needy parts of Zach and _pulls_. Zach’s entire body reacts, from the groan leaving his mouth to the muscles of his belly tightening and the curl of his toes. Chris sees it, of course, how can he not. “So greedy, sweetheart. You still need it so bad even now. If I’d known I’d find a gift like you in L.A., I would’ve been more prepared.”

“Prepared how?” 

“A plug to keep your hole loose. Some clamps for your sweet tits. Maybe that’ll stop you from playing with them so fucking shamelessly.”

Zach buries the sound he makes into the bed, but he can’t stop his hips from pressing back into the frustratingly insufficient touch of Chris’s finger. “No dildos? I’m disappointed, Chris,” he says, trying for mock-disapproving but it comes out too shakily.

“No dildos,” Chris repeats. “Nothing fucks you except for my fingers or my tongue or my cock, just _me_.”

“God,” Zach mutters. He wants that so bad, it's making his head dizzy. “Chris, you’re so – fuck. Do _something_. You’re killing me here.”

Chris reaches over him to grab the lube and seconds later, Zach’s thighs are a cold, slick mess as Chris smears lube between them, cupping Zach’s balls in his wet palms briefly and running his fingers over Zach’s taint, but completely ignoring his cock. They’re not quite on their sides anymore; Chris has pushed him forward enough that Zach’s half-settled on his belly, his dick grinding too softly against the sheets to be truly satisfying. The touch of air is cold against him when Chris spreads his cheeks and just - he’s just looking at Zach’s hole, and Zach’s not a shy guy, but fuck, his face is flaming up anyway. He can imagine the hot gleam in Chris’s eyes, like he’s inspecting his property.

“Take a picture—” Zach starts to say, promptly losing the rest of the sentence the moment Chris inserts his dick into the slippery space between Zach’s cheeks, rubbing up and down slowly.

“What was that?” Chris inquires innocently.

“You’re kind of a bastard, you know that?”

“But you like that about me.” 

“Only 'cause I've got questionable taste in men.”

He knows what’s next, so Zach goes ahead and presses his thighs together. His reward is Chris’s cock steadily pushing itself through that clamped space, the head nudging past the base of Zach’s dick and sliding between his balls until coarse hair scrapes against Zach’s ass. It feels so fucking good that Zach squeezes tighter together reflexively to trap the delicious sensation between his legs and he and Chris groan at the same time.

“Oh yeah, that's good," Chris says. "Almost as good as fucking you."

Almost. The word sticks in Zach’s head, its presence ugly and distracting. Zach doesn’t want to be _almost_. He wants to be perfect. Perfect for Chris, the way he was the first night. 

Chris is thrusting against him like he doesn’t intend to stop and there’s no indication he’s going to ask Zach for more than fucking between his thighs, but fueled by a sudden desperation that’s got nothing to do with his own needs but only with Chris’s, Zach blurts out, “Inside me. I want you inside me, Chris. Want you to come in my ass."

“You sure?”

“More than," Zach says just as Chris cups his head and brings him in for a hard, fierce press of lips.

“You’re too fucking good to me," Chris says throatily, like he's actually grateful to Zach for something. 

Zach might have considered the oddity of that some more had it not been for the click of the lube being opened again. He presses his forehead to the sheets, breathless first at the already familiar stroking and twisting of Chris’s fingers inside him, then at the tip of Chris’s dick rubbing against his hole in several tiny, teasing swipes. Zach can’t stop himself from bucking down, trying to force the thick head past his empty rim. Chris laughs, a husk of a sound, before he gives them both what they want and slides his dick in, slow, slow, slow. 

“Does it hurt, Zachary?”

“Hurts _good,_ ” Zach murmurs, eyes fluttering at hints of stinging. "Is it -- for you --?"

“Feels like I’m sliding into heaven,” Chris says, moaning luxuriously. Once he’s buried to the hilt and plastered to Zach’s back, Chris simply stays that way. Zach feels the thud of a heartbeat against his spine and nestled deep inside him, where Chris's cock is pulsing. He sighs, pressing back, wriggling down. He throws an arm back, his hand curling around the back of Chris’s neck. This is what he wants. This feels right.

“You like that?” Chris asks, his fingers roaming over Zach’s chest.

“Mm-hmm.”

“You’re so fucking sweet right now. Do you even care about getting off?”

“No,” Zach says honestly. His cock is hard, but he doesn’t want to touch himself just yet and he still hasn’t reached that staggering, desperate stage where the need to come is a clawing, gnawing thing vicious at the cradle of his hips. “Just want you in me.”

“You don’t even need to be fucked, you just want to be filled. All you need to be happy is a dick to sit on.”

“No,” Zach says again.

“No?”

Having his face turned away from Chris makes it easier for Zach to admit, “Not just anyone’s dick.”

Chris groans, pressing a wet kiss to Zach’s cheek. “Fuck, you're so loyal already. You know no one’s gonna give it to you as good as I can and no one’s gonna ever take my cock as well as you do. I could fuck you forever and it still wouldn't be enough."

If Zach could, he'd bottle up this feeling of being coveted so much, keep it with him so he never has to go without it. 

When Chris actually starts fucking him, it’s with thrusts that don’t go very deep, but each one brings a blissful haze falling down over Zach, piece by piece. His neck and shoulders buzz from the mauling of Chris’s mouth and the burn of his facial hair and there’s so much heat everywhere, sweat soldering Chris’s body to his. “Chris,” Zach murmurs, just for the sake of saying his name. “So good. Everything. _Chris_.”

“I know, baby. Know you love this. So beautiful when you’re slowly losing your mind on my cock.”

Chris doesn't stop touching him, caressing him all over, pinching Zach’s peaked nipples, rubbing his tensing belly, his ribs, squeezing his shaking thigh. His hands are a sweet torment and they play havoc with Zach’s spinning mind almost more than the cock barely moving inside him. His frustrating inability to decide which of the two he wants more pulls out sounds from Zach that are suspiciously similar to whimpers and now, now he finally feels it roar into life: the clawing, gnawing thing vicious at the cradle of his hips. Sounding like he’s been fucking _drugged_ , Zach moans out, “More. More, Chris, I need more. Please.”

But even as he’s sore and begging for more, Zach doesn’t want it to end. He doesn’t want to leave this behind, not yet.

The same thought must be screaming in Chris’s head too, because he speeds up, drawing Zach’s top leg up high to really drive into his hole, and the gravelly words tumbling out of him are, “Don’t go tonight. Stay for the rest of the week, stay in this bed so I can have you like this whenever I want. Say it, Zachary, say it, say you’ll fucking stay, I want to hear it.”

He’s thrusting wildly, hammering into Zach like that’ll get the response he wants out faster, and it works, Zach sobbing out, “Yes, yeah, fuck, please, Chris, I’ll stay, do anything, let you do anything, fuck me whenever, just _please_.”

Chris immediately switches tones, sweet and soothing. “It’s OK, sweetheart, you don’t have to beg this time,” but his hand is rough, dragging down Zach’s cock and balls, going further below to press against his prostate from the outside, and nothing in the world would’ve stopped Zach from coming after that, groaning like he’s being incinerated and is about to burn into ash.  

Without stopping, Chris pulls them both backwards until they’re sitting upright, Zach’s thighs over Chris’s, straddling him in reverse. Zach’s too trapped in his orgasm to do anything but sit there limp as a ragdoll, as Chris pounds into him from below, bouncing Zach down onto every upward thrust of his dick, fucking the come still jerking out of Zach’s cock right out of him.  

“Gonna mark you inside and out,” Chris says heatedly.

“Anything,” Zach breathes out. He turns his head, seeking out Chris’s lips, but it’s not possible to properly align their mouths, they can only share hot, panting breaths, quick swipes of tongue. “Bite me again when you come.”

Chris _growls_. There’s no other word for the raw, ferocious sound he makes. His nails dig into the half-moon shapes he’s already left behind on Zach’s bruised hips and he forces Zach down onto his final thrust, teeth scraping against Zach’s nape like a warning before they sink in. Zach moans and deliriously thinks maybe Chris’s teeth have gone through the skin and into Zach’s bones. Branded him there with the heat of his mouth, never to be erased.

***

When Zach eventually comes back to his senses, they’re back in the position they were in before with Chris's chest to Zach's back.

"Ignore what I said before," Chris says quietly. "You don’t need to really stay.”

Zach stays quiet. His thighs and ass are a wet, sticky mess. Chris’s come continues to slip out of him.

“I know it’s more than I should ask of you and you’ve spent enough time here anyway. You’ve got a life to get back to and I’ve got meetings.”

Zach's too tired to actually do it, but he kind of wants to laugh. This is nothing like how he’d imagined he’d be spending the days following Eric walking out of the apartment. Nothing at all. 

“Say something,” Chris says. “Talk to me, Zach.”

So Zach says, "Did you mean it or was it just a heat of the moment thing?”

“I meant it,” Chris replies without hesitation.

Slowly, Zach turns to face him. In turn, Chris props himself up on a forearm. A few locks of his hair fall forwards, hanging in front of his eyes, but he doesn't swipe them away. 

“I know the sex has been good, but why?”

Fooling around for a weekend is something Zach can understand - but longer than that possibly suggests an attachment of some sort.

Chris shrugs with one shoulder. “I like you. I like talking to you on top of the sex. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not trying to get you into a relationship or something here. It wouldn’t be anything more than what we’re doing already.” After a pause, he reiterates, “You don’t need to really stay.”

Zach looks away from him and stares up at the ceiling. The thing he is, he can if he wanted to. He’d managed to wrangle two weeks off work, thinking it would be nice to finally spend some special time with Eric that was longer than a few nights snatched here and there. He’d even thought about spontaneously booking an overseas trip, somewhere relaxing and warm with the ocean nearby.  

It’s not like Zach can’t see where Chris is coming from. He likes Chris too, finds him easy to be with and undemanding. Their conversations flow like tennis matches where both players are confident and the volleys never end, the ball never hits the ground. He knows already that it'd take no effort at all for them to be friends.

“You should wash up,” Chris says, “and then I’ll call a car for you. I can—”

“You don’t have to.”

“It’s the least I can do.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Then what do you mean?”

“I mean,” Zach says evenly, “I can stay the week. I have some time off work.”

“Yeah? It’ll only be until Friday morning.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to?”

Zach considers what he's got to go back to - an apartment overflowing with memories that used to be precious but are now a toxic miasma, intent on suffocating him - and it's enough to make his decision. Whatever this week turns out to be, it has the potential of being a break. A refuge from that haunted space and the things he doesn't want to deal with for now. Zach figures there are worse ways to run away from your problems and at least this one doesn't involve as much alcohol.  

“Zoe’s probably going to disagree with me on this," he says. "But I’ll stay. Good sex with a hot guy and no strings attached? Doesn’t sound that bad, if I'm honest.” Zach even manages a smile and it doesn’t feel nearly as forced as he thought it would. "Wanna seal it with a kiss?"

"It'd be my genuine pleasure," Chris says, offering a small, soft smile of his own and leaning down. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait! Lots of RL commitments and writing some of my own Star Trek fic kept me from updating this fic and I needed to heavily re-write this chapter in the end. Hope it makes up for the wait. Zach's a little...lost and all over the place in this one.

"You don't have to get up just yet. It’s only past 7," is the first thing Zach hears when he groans awake, his hand rising out from beneath the comforter to blindly flop around in search of his phone.

 _7:04_ flashes back at him along with a few alerts to messages from his friends, none of which he wants to reply to except for maybe Zoe’s. Sighing, he switches focus to Chris and sleepily watches him move around the room with purpose. Chris is an immaculate, elegant picture in his three-piece suit, the burgundy of his shirt a beautiful contrast to the black vest and slacks. His watch is back at his wrist, his ring gleaming from his little finger. The stubble collected over the previous nights are gone, leaving just a perfectly carved goatee once again.

Zach’s skin prickles with the remembered feel of that goatee against his skin. His body vibrates with just the kind of overuse and exhaustion he likes and, briefly, he grapples with the oddity of waking up without Chris’s hands on him, already intent on having their wicked way with him. The oddity quickly transforms into disappointment and the disappointment into embarrassment at being so used to Chris’s touch already, wanting him so instantly as if Zach really has become his kept boy.

Noticing Zach’s attention, Chris comes over and Zach moves himself away from the edge of the bed to welcome Chris in close. He gets a lungful of Chris’s cologne, breathing in again to appreciate it some more. Next to him, it’s hard for Zach to not feel scruffy, unkempt, and not in the sexy kind of way he’d prefer, but Chris doesn’t seem to mind. Zach looks up at him with a tired smile. “Good morning.”

“It would be a better morning if I could take advantage of you still in my bed.”

“Oh, I bet. I’d give you a nice kiss to make up for it, but morning breath is unfortunately a thing.”

Chris flicks a thumb over Zach’s lower lip. “As you already know, I’m very good at collecting,” he says and Zach takes it as the promise of a hot and heavy make-out session it is. “Since you’ll be here for a little longer, it might be a good idea to trade numbers.”

“There are easier ways to get my number, you know,” Zach says, unlocking his phone for Chris to key in his number. As Chris calls his own cell, Zach notices for the first time the slim, grey key-card on the small table beside the bed. “Your key’s still here.”

“That one’s yours,” Chris replies and places Zach’s phone beside it. “How else will you get in and out of the room while I’m not here?”

Zach eyes the key-card. “No one’s going to say anything?”

“The staff here are discreet, which is why I chose this place.”

“This is a lot of trust you’re showing.”

“If you were going to do anything nefarious, you would have done it already.”

“Maybe I’m just biding my time. Also, ‘nefarious’? Was ‘criminal’ too boring of a word for you?”

“f you’ve got a chance to use ‘nefarious’, you take it,” Chris says, very matter-of-factly.

“Really? Is that another law, written right below ‘you must share your name with the obscenely good-looking guy checking you out at the club’?”

“I take pride in being a law-abiding citizen.”

"Except for in bed, right? Because that's where you like to _be_ the law."

"I haven’t had any complaints so far,” Chris says, dropping his sultry gaze over Zach’s body and all that he has done to it. “Do you want to be the first?”

Zach pretends to ponder the question. “I _do_ like being first.”

“I’ll know you’re lying,” Chris says in a low, pointed murmur that Zach’s heard a lot of over the past weekend, usually as a prelude to more intimate things that never fail to leave Zach breathless and dazed. A glance at his wristwatch prompts Chris to add, “I should be back in the afternoon, but in the meantime, you’re free to hang out here. There’s breakfast on the table but if it’s nothing you like, just order something else.”

Zach sits up and makes a small show of brushing off nonexistent lint from Chris's shoulders and pretending to adjust his already perfectly straight tie. “Have a good day, honey. Don't forget to pick up some milk on your way back.”

Chris’s lips twitch into a smile. He rises up to slip on his dark suit jacket and it fits like a glove, just like everything else he's wearing. Grabbing his laptop case next, he suggests, “We should go out for a bite to eat when I'm done. I’ll come by the hotel and pick you up for, let's say, five thirty?”

Zach doesn’t see why not. "Sure. So long as it’s somewhere not too pricey and we can split the check."

“We’ll split the check,” Chris agrees. “Call me if you need anything.” Just before he steps out of the door, he adds, “Call me even if you don't,” and Zach gives him a small salute.

An incredible silence overwhelms the room as soon as the door closes behind Chris, as if he is the only other source of sound, of life and energy, in existence and his departure has taken it all with him. 

Uselessly, Zach stares at the door. This is the first time he’s really been alone since Eric left him. Zoe had stayed over at his place for the first two days, had gone with him to the club, and then he’d met Chris. It hadn’t been just the desire for a friend that had made him call Zoe but a need to be distracted. A refusal to be alone with his own hopeless, miserable thoughts.

He still hasn’t even told his mom or his brother and isn’t sure he wants to anytime soon, knowing how much his mother considers Eric as one of her own. Already he can see her devastation and he has to forcefully shove the image away before it stings too much. 

It's with a burst of relief and then curiosity that he spots the two books set out alongside the breakfast. Gladly, Zach climbs out of the bed with his phone in hand and the comforter draped around himself. The books are the ones Chris had mentioned and the first -- Ruth Ozeki’s _A Tale for the Time Being_  -- is a novel Zach's read and enjoyed himself. The second, while unfamiliar, just makes him chuckle, because it’s nice to know even the VP of a clearly successful tech company is interested in _The Meaning of Human Existence_.

Zach would like to think his break-up, wretched as it'd been, hasn’t left him feeling so low that he’s started wondering about human existence, so he opts to re-read _A Tale for the Time Being_ , wasting as much time as he can in Ozeki’s evocative prose. When he checks his phone, though, it’s only been an hour and his attempt at immersing himself back into the novel doesn't work nearly as well as he wants it to.

His rebellious mind wanders in a way it hadn’t with Chris around. He feels aimless. There’s no one here to talk to and laugh with. To touch and kiss and satisfy. Spontaneous as his decision to stay with Chris had been, it had also given him a kind of purpose and Chris’s easy, almost authoritative way with him had only helped.

After the fourth time re-reading the same sentence, Zach sighs and closes the book. He goes over to the window, opening it up so that the noise of the streets outside spills in with greater clarity. The breeze that also sneaks in is a little too sharp for his liking and he shivers, wrapping the comforter higher and tighter around himself as he watches the people down below go about their business with enviable casualness.

There are two girls talking to each other excitedly, sharing smiles and laughter and company, and Zach abruptly remembers Zoe’s message to call her.

He returns to the table, where his phone sits next to the pastries he still hasn't eaten.  

“Zach!” Zoe exclaims, picking up almost immediately.

“Hey, Zo.”

“Finally! I was going to give you another hour before I called myself. I got your text last night, but…”

“It just confused you?”

“Yeah. You’re seriously staying with him for the week? Are you sure everything is OK? He’s not making you--”

“Zoe,” he interrupts firmly. She stops, but makes that soft, little huffy sound she makes when she’s trying not to sigh. Zach clears his throat and stretches his legs out in front of him, closing his eyes at the ache of his muscles. The back of his neck throbs with Chris's mark. “If he was making me do this, do you think I’d be allowed to reveal that to you?”

“Well, no, but what's so special about this guy? You’ve got me all curious about him, when I'm not wondering if he's a serial-killer."

“It’s not so much him as it is-- OK, it _is_ him, but it’s also about how I just don’t want to go back to my apartment. I can’t, Zoe. Not right now. I don’t know how I’m going to be able to even breathe in there, let alone live there.”

“You could have stayed at mine for a bit, honey,” Zoe says, so softly that he knows she’s not really arguing with him, that she does understand even if she’s gently reminding him. “He’s being good to you, right?”

Good in more than one way, Zach thinks. “Yeah, he’s been really great. We get along like a house on fire; you don't need to worry about me so much.”

“How can I not? This is the last thing I expected you to do.”

“I know. You don’t need to tell me, I _know_. This might end up being a terrible decision and I'm fully aware all I'm doing is burying my head in the sand, but I feel like I need to do this, Chris or no Chris. I need to get away from everything for a bit.”

“Most people would go for an actual vacation,” Zoe points out.

“Why spend mine when I can spend his? Important life lessons courtesy of Lady Marmalade.”

“So you’re going to spend the week drinking magnolia wine and freaking on his black satin sheets?”

“Blue silk sheets over here,” Zach corrects, “but yeah, lots of freaking. I don’t think I’m gonna be walking--”

“Stop right there! I didn’t sign up for exclusive details about the Zachary Quinto’s Magical Ass Show!”

Zach laughs and the sound of it must reassure Zoe more than Zach’s fumbled explaining did, because she laughs too and playfully says, “Congrats, by the way. I got only a quick look at the club, but from what I saw, he’s _hot_ , you lucky dog.”

“I may have lost my man, but at least I’ve got enough magic leftover to pull another one even if it is temporary,” Zach says dryly. A little too dryly. He can imagine Zoe's wince.

“Zach,” she starts to say, sympathetic. 

“And that is my cue to hang up,” he says quickly. “Take care of yourself, Zoe. We'll talk soon, OK?" 

Cutting the call, knowing that she'll forgive him for it, Zach buries his face in his hands. Breathes in and out slowly.

He keeps it up for ten seconds, thirty seconds and then comes to a decision: he needs some air and some spare clothes if he’s going to be staying with Chris for the week.

***

Pulling up the hood of his jacket doesn’t really help with hiding all the marks on his neck and shoulders, but Zach prefers the illusion so he keeps the hood in place as he leaves the hotel.

Outside, it doesn’t take long before he begins feeling awkward and ungainly in similar way to how he’d felt years ago, back when he was a teenager walking down the hallways of his high school, still growing into himself, still trying to figure himself out. Aware that he’s starting to hunch in on himself, Zach straightens his shoulders out again, lifting his head.

Irrational thoughts flick through the forefront of his mind. Is there anyone watching him? Judging the state of him? Can they tell he’s had a rough week or that someone has broken up with him? Can they tell he’s spent the last few days getting fucked from the way he’s walking?

It’s a challenge, suddenly, the idea of stepping into a store to buy some basic clothing and toiletries. As he shops, he’s simultaneously trying to rush through his purchases and trying to prolong it so that he doesn’t have to go back to that empty hotel room, where he doesn’t even have a task as simple as this to keep him occupied. If it’s the right size and not an obnoxious color, he grabs it and hears Eric's voice in his head, remarking that maybe Zach did know something about shopping quickly and without fuss, after all.

But, Zach thinks as he hands over his credit card to the checkout girl, the real Eric isn’t here to spew out any irritating bullshit so imaginary Eric can go and fuck himself, too. 

It’s as he’s slowly walking around, no particular destination in mind but never straying too far from the hotel, that his phone buzzes with a new message. Zach takes a look and can’t help his smile at the name or the text he sees:  _The unfortunate thing about important meetings is that they can also be extremely dull._

 _This behavior is unbecoming of a man of your position, Mr. Pine_ , Zach sends back. _You ought to demonstrate more focus._

 _I think I'll choose to focus on you._ _For instance, what are you wearing?_

Zach rolls his eyes, but it’s pointless when he’s still smiling. _Come up with something less of a cliché and maybe I’ll tell you. I thought you said you have better technique._

Chris returns, _Good thing I have enough time between now and dinner_. _I look forward to both the company and the food._  

But before Zach can issue another reply, there’s a soft touch to his shoulder. A voice saying, “Zach?”

Zach pockets his phone and whips around to lock eyes with a familiar face.  “Miles?”

“Hey there.” Miles smiles and it softens up the sharpness of his face. “Thought it looked like you. It's good to see you.”

Zach's surprise lasts for a few seconds more before he remembers. "Your office is somewhere along here, isn't it."

Miles nods and they quickly lapse into an uncomfortable silence. “It’s been a while,” Miles says eventually. “I was thinking of calling you, but I figured you wanted some space. Zoe said you're dealing with…everything in your own way.”

“Uh, yeah. I am. Dealing with it in my own way.” Zach bites his lower lip and tries to fight it, but his self-control slips out of his grip like water. “Have you talked to him?”

Miles hesitates. Zach raises his eyebrows and it pushes Miles to admit, “Yeah. A little. I ran into him at the grocery store; he wasn’t really in a talking mood.”

“Oh, really? Why was that? Was the guilt getting to him?”

“He did seem unhappy, Zach. I know that doesn’t help you in any way to hear that, though.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Zach says, hard and snide. “His happiness or unhappiness no longer has anything to do with me and that's all his own fault.” He can hear the loathing in his own voice and he makes to say something more, the anger forming itself into more hostile words on his tongue, but looking at Miles, the discomfited expression on his face, Zach just feels bad. Miles isn’t the one who should have to endure his bitterness, not when he’s always had a kind word and a smile to spare for Zach.

He’s never let Miles know, but Zach’s aware of what Miles feels for him. He knows that if they had met before Zach had found Eric, it could’ve easily been Miles in Eric’s place, but if he didn’t have anything to give Miles back then, well, he has even less now.

“If you don’t want me to talk to him,” Miles says, “I can--”

“No, it’s fine,” Zach says reluctantly. “The mess between Eric and me is just between us, no one else. As much as I want to be selfish, it’s not right of me to make you guys to feel like you need to take sides.”

“OK, if you’re sure,” Miles says, something odd in his voice, and Zach realizes Miles is no longer looking at him, but at his neck, where the bruises Chris had left behind are more than visible.

Zach pulls at his hood awkwardly, trying futilely to cover them up. “I’m kind of…hanging out with someone right now.”

Miles nods slowly. “Of course. You do whatever you need to. Um,” he looks around, “have you had anything to eat? They've got a place that does great burritos down here, if you want to…” Miles’s voice trails off at whatever he sees on Zach’s face. “Another day, maybe.”

“Another day,” Zach promises and tries to mean it. It’s not a bad idea, really, to catch up with Miles at some point.  “I should get going.”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure. I’m just glad you’re, you know, OK. Ish.”

“OK-ish sounds about right,” Zach says with a forced smile. “Thanks, Miles. I appreciate it. I’ll see you around sometime, all right?”

“Take care of yourself, Zach. Let me know when you’re ready to meet up or if you just need anything. Someone to talk or whatever.”

Zach nods a few more times than is really necessary and hurries off.

His phone doesn’t have Eric’s number anymore, but he still remembers the digits. Eric has probably changed it by now -- or maybe not. Maybe he’s forgotten and Zach can still call him, a little flare of hope waking up in his chest despite everything, and he can say…say what? Zach doesn’t know. They said more than enough the day they broke up.

He’s back at the hotel before he knows it, slamming the door shut and stumbling back against it, heart thundering in his chest like he’s just ran a marathon. He pulls out his cell and throws it away from him, so that he doesn’t give into any temptation to call the number burned into his brain.

Lunch is overdue and all he had for breakfast was the pastry he’d grabbed before leaving, but what he needs more right now is a drink. A couple of drinks -- and maybe a few more added onto that, Zach reckons, heading over to the minibar. He hasn’t been like this in years, too responsible and too insistent on being put-together, but it’s the same foreign feeling that had propelled him to the club Friday night.

The minibar is still adequately stocked to suit his tastes and Zach crouches down next to it, pouring himself a drink that disappears down his throat quickly. The second shot goes down just as fast and then he ignores the glass entirely, taking large swigs straight from the bottle and coughing as he carelessly drops it onto the floor. He grabs it and rights the bottle before it can spill too much. Chris's voice in his head says, “ _Do you have something against the glasses in this place?_ ” and Zach abruptly stops. Wonders what the hell he is doing, trying to get drunk on liquor bought by another man’s wealth, hours away from the dinner he’s supposed to have with the same man, and all because he'd talked to Miles about Eric, not even to Eric himself. 

It’s only the thought of Chris that stays Zach's hand and keeps him from drinking anymore, but there’s nothing to douse the burning sensation in his chest, like his gasoline heart is still on fire from the match Eric had flicked against it. He licks his lips, chasing after the taste of whisky.  

From where he’s sitting, he can look right into the bathroom through the open door that connects it to the main room. There’s a floor-length mirror in the bathroom; every time Zach passes it, he feels mild surprise that Chris hasn’t fucked him against it yet but there’s still the week ahead of them. He sees himself, something weak and vulnerable, a soft animal that’s lost his protective shell. 

Straightening up, he stands, swaying a bit, and makes his way carefully towards that unfamiliar man he sees in the mirror until they’re both standing in front of each other. He sees eyes that are tired and skin that looks wan. A beard that needs shaving. He feels like a cheap thing in the clothes he’d worn on a night he’d intended to get drunk and laid.

Swallowing, Zach pulls off his t-shirt, then his boots and jeans. Bare skin and fading bruises and somehow it’s better that way. Better to see what’s been left behind by Chris’s mouth, Chris’s fingers, and to know that Chris had looked at him and found someone desirable still.

Slowly, Zach runs his hands over the marks, breath hitching. The memories behind each one rise up again like they’ve been woken up by his tentative touch and he finds refuge in them.  

He turns to the oval-shaped, large bathtub next, plugging it up and letting the water run until it’s as hot and high as he prefers. The water, soothing with its heat, embraces him as Zach lowers himself down into it, sighing and groaning. He leans his head back against the tub, stares up at the ceiling, and imagines the shutting down of a machine. Each light flickering off one after the other, all whirring coming to a halt and all sound dying. He imagines himself growing as dormant as that machine and closes his eyes. Tunes everything out. With the whisky in his system, it’s easier.

And then it isn't because he’s suddenly not alone anymore.

“ _Zach_. Hey, Zach, wake up.”

The water, cold now, splashes back against Zach as he startles, but there’s also a drowsiness pushing down on his lids, making it hard to keep them open. He shivers. His skin feels like paper, delicate and wrinkled. Chris is kneeling beside the tub, his hand on Zach’s arm, rubbing warmth back into him gently.

“Hey, Zach. Come on, let’s get you out of there.”

“Chris,” Zach says. His tongue feels thick and dull in his mouth. There’s a sour taste inside. “What...what are you doing here?”

“Getting you out of cold water and into bed. Come on. Unless you want me carry you over the threshold and thoroughly embarrass you, you need to work with me.”

Zach tries to, struggling with an overwhelming urge to just close his eyes and drop back into that oblivion Chris had woken him from. It’s strange that he feels tired -- wasn’t he just sleeping? But he hadn’t meant to fall asleep in the first place. “I’m getting your clothes wet,” he mumbles when he notices. 

“It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not. That suit probably costs a few thousand.”

“Stop,” Chris says in a voice that's irrefutable. “Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter.”

“OK,” Zach says, deciding it’s easier to just listen to Chris. He accepts the towel that Chris wraps him up in, letting himself be dried off, and he cooperates with Chris as well as he can to get them both to the bed, where he tries not to drag Chris down with him. He wants to, though. He wants Chris next to him, so that Zach can burrow himself in Chris's arms and press his face to Chris's shoulder. “I drank some...Chris, I’m sorry I drank your whisky.”

“Just drink some water for me now,” Chris says patiently, “and then you can rest.” He doesn't know when Chris had prepared it, but Zach doesn't bother asking and obediently drinks until the glass is empty and Chris is helping him get comfortable on the bed. “Close your eyes.”

“I had a weird day. I’m tired, Chris.”

“I know. Just close your eyes for me.”

“You smell really nice,” Zach mumbles and lets his eyes fall shut. “But you always do.”

A hand soothingly runs through Zach’s hair, slowing down further the incomprehensible, sluggish mess of thoughts in his head until he doesn’t think and feel anything at all, swept up in a comforting darkness. 

***

He’s lying against something firm and warm, cradled to it comfortably by an arm. Zach lifts his head, squints until the haziness resolves into a bespectacled Chris reading a book.

Chris folds the top corner of the page down. The boxy lenses only seem to enhance his eyes. "Welcome back. How are you feeling?”

“You,” Zach says slowly, “wear glasses.”

“Sometimes, yes. I try to avoid wearing them around others.”

“Don’t want to make them jealous of how good you look?”

“Exactly. How are you feeling?”

“You mean...am I jealous?”

“No," Chris chuckles. "I mean, how’s your head?"

“Kinda hurts, but I'm all right,” Zach says, sitting up and rubbing gently at his temples. Then he remembers what had happened and the embarrassment floods in, becoming all he can feel. Wide-eyed, he rushes to say, “Oh my God, what was I even doing. I’m so sorry, Chris. We were meant to go to dinner and I just completely--”

“Don’t worry about it. There’s always tomorrow.”

“No, but I don’t _do_ that,” Zach says, needing Chris to understand. “Getting drunk and all of that, that’s not who I am, Chris. I promise I’m not taking advantage of your money to get buzzed on free drinks or something.”

“I didn’t think you were.”

“I owe you an explanation,” Zach insists. “After that, it’s only right that I explain.”

“Eat a few sandwiches and drink some water first,” Chris says and points to the tray of sandwiches on the round table they’ve been dining at for the past few days. “I ordered a selection of sandwiches, so you can have your pick.”

The hunger he’s been ignoring all day roars in his belly with full force, so Zach nods. “I’m just gonna get dressed and brush my teeth first,” he mumbles, disgusted by the taste in his mouth and self-consciousness about his own nakedness for the first time since stepping into Chris's hotel room. He moves swiftly into the bathroom with a bag of the new clothes he'd bought, trying not to look like he's running even though he has a fierce urge to shut the door and just hide. 

When he comes back, Chris has relocated both himself and the tray of sandwiches to the couch. "I've already eaten, so it's all for you. I found your phone on the floor, by the way, and put it on the nightstand." He waves off Zach's thanks and gestures for him to start eating. 

Zach chooses one that tastes like lobster with lime mayonnaise and another that's filled with pulled beef. He takes a third sandwich after finishing the first two, but only eats half of it before finally broaching the question that had popped into his head while he was in the bathroom. “Why are you still being so accommodating?”

“You don’t want me to be?” Chris asks, raising an eyebrow at him. Coupled with the glasses, it makes him look like a stern professor and Zach quickly shuts that line of thought down right there before he starts thinking of students bending over for the smack of a ruler.

“No, just, I would've thought you'd be a little more wary now. If I didn’t want to tell you, would you be OK with that, too?”

“ _Do_ you want to tell me or do you just feel like you have to?”

The latter, Zach wants to say, but now that he's thinking about it more closely, he isn't so sure. Chris is a relative stranger. Beyond the sex, they don't really know much of each other when it comes to the personal details and maybe that's an advantage here. Chris doesn't know enough about him to really have any judgments; he seems to be a neutral party, like a therapist, which gives him the courage to confess, “I broke up with my boyfriend last week. He broke up with me, to be more accurate, after nearly two and half years of dating. You don't need to say anything, it's OK. People usually fall back on platitudes because they don't know what to say to someone who's just been dumped and I'm not very interested in hearing any of those."  

Chris nods and instead asks, "How did the two of you meet?”

“Met him at a club, just the way I met you. Eric was one of the bartenders there, kept flirting with me every time I went to get some drinks. I knew that that was just a thing some bartenders did for extra tips, but I could tell he was being genuine. I ended up spending more time at the bar than with the friends I’d gone there with and when I was getting ready to leave, he asked for my number. I gave him a kiss instead and left. The following week, he was there again, beaming at me like he'd been counting the minutes until he could see me again. We went on four, five dates before we officially started going steady.”

“Sounds like you had a great start.”

“Oh, we did, but getting together is the easier part. Staying together – that takes a lot of effort. We had our fair share of arguments and our lives got more complicated when I was getting busier at work and he’d gotten the job he’d always wanted of writing for a magazine, but there were times when we were so happy, Chris. I honestly always thought that we were both in it for the long haul and that was my mistake, because, somewhere along the way, it had changed for him and I'd never noticed the signs.”

What humiliates Zach the most is how he hadn’t realized it until it was over. It had taken Eric telling him to see just how far apart their paths had diverged and to realize why Eric no longer kissed or touched him often, why he seemed to be distant even when he was sitting right next to Zach on the bed. 

“You don’t need to say anymore,” Chris says gently and Zach realizes he’s gone silent.

Shaking his head, he continues, "Anyway, so it came to a head last week and all of a sudden, he was yelling at me, ‘I’m not in love with you anymore.' I kind of just froze, because I thought shit like that happened only in the movies, you know? In those last months, the things I did for him, thinking I was being a good boyfriend, did he even care? Every time we had sex -- which by then wasn't often -- was he thinking ‘I wish we didn’t have to fuck’? ‘Your body is boring and having sex with you is boring and I’m just so fucking bored'?” Zach laughs and it's like acid in his throat. “I have a lot of questions, but I don’t think I want the answers to all of them.” He sighs, meeting Chris's eyes with new reluctance. “You weren’t looking to get any drama, right? Just someone easy to fuck.”

“I don’t regret asking you to come with me, Zach. I’m just sorry you’re going through a rough time.”

“Why? You don’t even know me. Not really.”

Chris simply says, “I’d like to, if you're willing to let me.”

The funny thing is, Zach believes him. He's only known Chris for a handful of days, but he can already that there's nothing about Chris that is an act. He is always authentically himself, someone you can take at face value. "How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Know just what to say. You’ve been doing that right from the beginning. Am I really that easy to read?”

"Believe me, I’m not some kind of magician who never gets people wrong. One thing I have learned, though, is to listen more. I wasn’t so good at that when I was younger, but I guess I've improved.”

“You, not good at something? Sounds dubious,” Zach says and watches Chris smiles.

“I bought you something, actually,” Chris says, heading back over to the nightstand and the black and gold bag perched on it. He re-settles beside Zach, handing the bag over, and Zach peeks inside to find dark grey fabric.

“Is that a scarf?” Pulling it out, the fabric unfolds like a rope and Zach rubs his fingertips gently into the softness. “You bought me a scarf.”

“So that the entire world can’t see those little presents I gave you,” Chris says.

“I went shopping today to buy some extra clothes,” Zach tells him and would have gestured to his own, far less classy shopping bags, but he doesn’t want to let go of the scarf in his hands. “One thing I didn’t buy was a scarf. Convenient, huh? Have I accidentally gotten myself a sugar daddy, Chris?”

“Well,” Chris says with a shrug that's innocent but a look in his eyes that's anything but, “if you’re into that, arrangements can be made.”

"I’m happy with just a scarf for now, thanks, but I’ll let you know if I change my mind.”

For the rest of the evening, Chris is never really any less solicitous than he’s already been, but he doesn’t touch Zach much, either. Zach gets the feeling that Chris has actually left it up to him to make the next move. To either call an end to whatever this is that they’re doing or see it through.

It's what makes him move himself up onto Chris’s lap to kiss him, taking his time with it so that they can both just sink into it like it’s a slow waltz. "Thanks," he says quietly, certain that Chris knows it's not just the scarf Zach is thanking him for and glad that Chris doesn't make him explain himself. He only kisses back, his arms wrapped around Zach, and in that unwavering hold, Zach feels the steadiest he's been all day. 


End file.
